Intel® FPGA AI Suite: SoC Design Example User Guide

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ID 768979
Date 9/06/2023
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Document Table of Contents
Document Table of Contents x
1. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example User Guide 2. About the SoC Design Example 3. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Quick Start Tutorial 4. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Run Process 5. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Build Process 6. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Intel® Quartus® Prime System Architecture 7. Intel® FPGA AI Suite Soc Design Example Software Components 8. Streaming-to-Memory (S2M) Streaming Demonstration A. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example User Guide Archives B. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example User Guide Document Revision History
2. About the SoC Design Example x
2.1. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Prerequisites
3. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Quick Start Tutorial x
3.1. Initial Setup 3.2. Initializing a Work Directory 3.3. (Optional) Create an SD Card Image (.wic) 3.4. Writing the SD Card Image (.wic) to an SD Card 3.5. Preparing the Intel® Arria® 10 SX SoC FPGA Development Kit for the Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example 3.6. Adding Compiled Graphs (AOT files) to the SD Card 3.7. Running the Demonstration Applications
3.3. (Optional) Create an SD Card Image (.wic) x
3.3.1. Installing Prerequisite Software for Building an SD Card Image 3.3.2. Building the FPGA Bitstreams 3.3.3. Installing HPS Disk Image Build Prerequisites 3.3.4. (Optional) Downloading the ImageNet Categories 3.3.5. Building the SD Card Image
3.5. Preparing the Intel® Arria® 10 SX SoC FPGA Development Kit for the Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example x
3.5.1. Confirming Intel® Arria® 10 SX SoC FPGA Development Kit Board Settings 3.5.2. Connect the Intel® Arria® 10 SX SoC FPGA Development Kit to the Host Development System 3.5.3. Configuring the Intel® Arria® 10 SX SoC FPGA Development Kit UART Connection 3.5.4. Determining the Intel® Arria® 10 SX SoC FPGA Development Kit IP Address
3.6. Adding Compiled Graphs (AOT files) to the SD Card x
3.6.1. Preparing OpenVINO™ Model Zoo 3.6.2. Preparing a Model 3.6.3. Compiling the Graphs 3.6.4. Copying the Compiled Graphs to the SD card
3.7. Running the Demonstration Applications x
3.7.1. Running the M2M Mode Demonstration Application 3.7.2. Running the S2M Mode Demonstration Application 3.7.3. Troubleshooting the Demonstration Applications
4. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Run Process x
4.1. Exporting Trained Graphs from Source Frameworks 4.2. Compiling Exported Graphs Through the Intel® FPGA AI Suite
5. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Build Process x
5.1. Building the Intel® Quartus® Prime Project 5.2. Building the Bootable SD Card Image (.wic)
5.1. Building the Intel® Quartus® Prime Project x
5.1.1. Intel® Quartus® Prime Build Flow 5.1.2. Build Script Options 5.1.3. Build Directory
5.1.1. Intel® Quartus® Prime Build Flow x
5.1.1.1. Build Synchronization of FPGA with Software
5.1.3. Build Directory x
5.1.3.1. The create_project.bash Script 5.1.3.2. The generate_sof.bash Script 5.1.3.3. The generate_rbf.bash Script 5.1.3.4. The build_stream_controller.sh Script
6. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Intel® Quartus® Prime System Architecture x
6.1. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Inference Sequence Overview 6.2. Memory-to-Memory (M2M) Variant Design 6.3. Streaming-to-Memory (S2M) Variant Design 6.4. Top Level 6.5. The SoC Design Example Platform Designer System 6.6. Fabric EMIF Design Component 6.7. PLL Configuration
6.2. Memory-to-Memory (M2M) Variant Design x
6.2.1. The mSGDMA Intel FPGA IP 6.2.2. RAM considerations
6.3. Streaming-to-Memory (S2M) Variant Design x
6.3.1. Streaming Enablement for Intel® FPGA AI Suite 6.3.2. Nios® V Subsystem 6.3.3. Streaming System Operation 6.3.4. Resolving Input Rate Mismatches Between the Intel® FPGA AI Suite IP and the Streaming Input 6.3.5. The Layout Transform IP as an Application-Specific Block
6.3.3. Streaming System Operation x
6.3.3.1. Streaming System Buffer Management 6.3.3.2. Streaming System Inference Job Management
6.3.5. The Layout Transform IP as an Application-Specific Block x
6.3.5.1. Layout Transform Considerations 6.3.5.2. Layout Transform IP Register Map 6.3.5.3. Layout Transform Configuration Options
6.4. Top Level x
6.4.1. Clock Domains
6.5. The SoC Design Example Platform Designer System x
6.5.1. The dla_0 Platform Designer Layer (dla.qsys) 6.5.2. The hps_0 Platform Designer Layer (hps.qys)
7. Intel® FPGA AI Suite Soc Design Example Software Components x
7.1. Yocto Build and Runtime Linux Environment 7.2. Intel® FPGA AI Suite Runtime Plugin 7.3. Runtime Interaction with the MMD Layer 7.4. MMD Layer Hardware Interaction Library
7.1. Yocto Build and Runtime Linux Environment x
7.1.1. Yocto Recipe: recipes-core/images/coredla-image.bb 7.1.2. Yocto Recipe: recipes-bsp/u-boot/u-boot-socfpga_%.bbapend 7.1.3. Yocto Recipe: recipes-drivers/msgdma-userio/msgdma-userio.bb 7.1.4. Yocto Recipe: recipes-drivers/uio-devices/uio-devices.bb 7.1.5. Yocto Recipe: recipes-kernel/linux/linux-socfpga-lts_5.15.bbappend 7.1.6. Yocto Recipe: wic
7.4. MMD Layer Hardware Interaction Library x
7.4.1. MMD Layer Hardware Interaction Library Class mmd_device 7.4.2. MMD Layer Hardware Interaction Library Class uio_device 7.4.3. MMD Layer Hardware Interaction Library Class dma_device
8. Streaming-to-Memory (S2M) Streaming Demonstration x
8.1. Nios® Subsystem 8.2. Building the Stream Controller Module 8.3. Building the Streaming Demonstration Applications 8.4. Running the Streaming Demonstration
8.1. Nios® Subsystem x
8.1.1. Stream Controller Communication Protocol 8.1.2. Buffer Flow in Streaming Mode using Nios® V Software Scheduler
8.1.2. Buffer Flow in Streaming Mode using Nios® V Software Scheduler x
8.1.2.1. Review of M2M mode 8.1.2.2. External Streaming Mode Buffer Flow 8.1.2.3. Nios® V Stream Controller State Machine Buffer Flow
8.4. Running the Streaming Demonstration x
8.4.1. The streaming_inference_app Application 8.4.2. The image_streaming_app Application
1. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example User Guide
2. About the SoC Design Example
3. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Quick Start Tutorial
4. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Run Process
5. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Build Process
6. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example Intel® Quartus® Prime System Architecture
7. Intel® FPGA AI Suite Soc Design Example Software Components
8. Streaming-to-Memory (S2M) Streaming Demonstration
A. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example User Guide Archives
B. Intel® FPGA AI Suite SoC Design Example User Guide Document Revision History

6.3.4. Resolving Input Rate Mismatches Between the Intel® FPGA AI Suite IP and the Streaming Input

When designing a system, the stream buffer rate should be matched to the Intel® FPGA AI Suite IP inferencing rate, so that the input data does not arrive faster than the IP can process it.

The SoC design example has safeguards in the Nios® subsystem for when the input data rate exceeds the Intel® FPGA AI Suite processing rate.

To prevent input buffer overflow (potentially writing to memory still being processed by the Intel® FPGA AI Suite IP), the Nios® subsystem has a buffer dropping technique built into it. If the subsystem detects that the Intel® FPGA AI Suite IP is falling behind, it starts dropping input buffers to allow the IP to catch up.

Using mailbox commands, the host application can check the queue depth level of the Nios® subsystem and see if the subsystem needs to drop input data.

Depending on the buffer processing requirements of a design, dropping input data might not be considered a failure. It is up to you to ensure that the IP inference rate meets the needs of the input data.

If buffer dropping is not desired, you can try to alleviate buffer dropping and increase Intel® FPGA AI Suite IP performance with the following options:

  • Configure a higher performance .arch file (IP configuration), which requires more FPGA resource. The .arch can be customized for the target machine learning graphs.
  • Increase the system clock-speed.
  • Reduce the size of the machine learning network, if possible.
  • Implement multiple instances of the Intel® FPGA AI Suite IP and multiplex input data between them.
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